Dear Parliament # 3

An open letter to Parliament: #3

Dear Jacinda, Simon, Winston, Marama, James, David, Labour Party, National Party, NZ First, Green Party of Aotearoa NZ, and Act Party and all other political parties.

Tēnā koutou katoa,

My name is Alicia and I am still a very concerned mother. I am also not going away until we have a proper conversation around how or even if you are going to lead us forward through the Climate Crisis.

They say it's always darkest before the dawn. Right now it feels like it's getting so dark I can barely see the way through. It only fuels my determination to fight alongside everyone else for a different dawn for our children and our environment.

Hopefully by the time you read this you will have had the courage and fortitude to declare a climate emergency. My first letter to you by the way received an overwhelming positive response. We, the people of Aotearoa New Zealand, are not only ready but getting on with sorting the solutions ourselves. Eventually Parliament might not even exist because we, as a society, have moved on from you. For the first time in known human history all countries must work together on a global level to solve this planetary crisis yet there is this paralysis. This is a failure of your duty of care to your people on a national level and global scale.

So let me help you out by briefly describing some of the many excellent but most importantly existing solutions. Regenerative farming. How good is it! "Project Drawdown, has estimated that regenerative agricultural could remove an astonishing 23.15 gigatons of CO2 from our atmosphere by 2050! All the while making our soils healthier and our food more nutritious. It’s a win-win for people and the planet!" Farmers can literally become the world's super heroes and National you are instilling fear and division when you can be the superstars of the country by empowering farmers to make these choices. By creating policies and cross party collaboration to support farmers to learn and transition to regenerative farming. I will give you a hint - look to iwi and their indigenous practices on caring for the whenua. Also check out how Australia is doing it right here: Regenerative Agriculture.

There is so much happening and so much potential in transitioning now to a clean energy economy. The opportunity to retrain those working in fossil fuel industries to be fitting out our homes to be more energy efficient, to retrain in clean renewable energy fields, to install peer to peer solar panels. Endless Clean Energy Solutions.

Not to mention a whole new workforce need for Marine Permaculture and whole new workforce trained to teach us new skills for Circular Economy.

I have left my personal favourite for last. Educating AND Empowering women and girls. It's listed as the number 6 best way to combat the climate crisis but combine that with voluntary family planning and it becomes THE number one way.

Women and Farmers. Who would have thought.

Do you know what I love most about all this though...the solutions are already out there on a smaller scale and simply need you to lift up, support and transition from the dark into the new dawn. We have some very clever and very innovative people here and around the world working away on things because that's what people do. We get shit done. How about rolling up your sleeves and giving us a hand eh?

Ngā mihi Alicia Hall Millions of Mothers